Penny Dreadful’s penultimate episode underscores one irrefutable fact about the show: it belongs and has always belonged to one woman, Eva Green. Following in the footsteps of other great actresses in female-driven horror series (Jessica Lange, Angela Bassett, and Kathy Bates among many, many others in American Horror Story and Vera Farmiga in Bates Motel), Green so clearly dominates the Dreadful proceedings that her costars are often pushed to the sidelines, carriers of the subplots while she serves the main course.
John Oliver Destroys Dr. Oz with Bonus Tap Dancing Buscemi
With Stephen Colbert stepping away from his Colbert Report persona to take over for Letterman soon, there’s an impending vacuum of caustic (and utterly necessary) satire and criticism of the news media on TV. While it hasn’t quite hit its stride yet, the HBO weekly ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’ appears ready to help fill the void. A couple of weeks ago, Oliver rather beautifully tore into the FCC and the debacle over Net Neutrality. This week he tackles the essentially unregulated dietary supplement industry and one of its head cheerleaders, Dr. Oz. I know it sounds kind of dull, but it’s pretty funny. Also: tap-dancing Steve Buscemi. Check it out after the jump.
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Soderbergh’s ‘Girlfriend Experience’ comes to Starz
Steven Soderbergh quietly continues to prove that the Internet made way too big a deal out of his so-called “retirement.” With his early 20th century New York hospital drama ‘The Knick’ set to drop on Cinemax later this summer, Deadline reports that Soderbergh will executive produce a 13-part anthology series based on his 2009 film ‘The Girlfriend Experience.’ Indie filmmakers Lodge Kerrigan (Keane) and Amy Seimetz (Sun Don’t Shine) will write and direct.
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Critics’ Choice TV Award Winners
I could nitpick here and there, but for the most part I have to admit these awards are pretty decent. Winners at the top of the list.
BEST DRAMA SERIES
- Breaking Bad (AMC) (WINNER)
- The Americans (FX)
- Game of Thrones (HBO)
- The Good Wife (CBS)
- Masters of Sex (Showtime)
- True Detective (HBO)
BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
- Matthew McConaughey, True Detective (HBO) (WINNER)
- Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad (AMC)
- Hugh Dancy, Hannibal (NBC)
- Freddie Highmore, Bates Motel (A&E)
- Matthew Rhys, The Americans (FX)
- Michael Sheen, Masters of Sex (Showtime)
FYC Best Supporting Actor – Comedy: Reid Scott
HBO’s Veep is a show that took me a while to warm up to. In fact, I’m not even sure the phrase “warm up to” can apply to a show that is so cold and unsparing in its satire as to never rely on a warm, gooey center to engage the audience. To laugh at Veep is to ridicule all of its characters. No one is competent save Sue Wilson (Sufe Bradshaw) who has emerged as the closest thing the show offers to an audience surrogate.
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Penny Dreadful: What Death Can Join Together
Penny Dreadful’s latest chapter, What Death Can Join Together, is its weakest outing to date. It’s especially disappointing coming off of last week’s polarizing journey (that I personally loved) into the backstory of Vanessa Ives. Although the talented Coky Giedroyc (ITV’s Wuthering Heights) directed both episodes, this new outing has none of the sumptuous visuals and centered storytelling that made last week’s so unique.
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Game of Thrones: Stonehearted Internet (Spoilers)
The Game of Thrones Season 4 finale is, for my money, the best season finale the creators have delivered thus far. The show achieved notoriety for its penchant of delivering the big series impacts not in the season finale but in the penultimate episode. The beheading of Ned Stark. The Battle of Blackwater. The Red Wedding. All of those seismic events took place in the ninth episode of each 10-episode season.
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Emmys – For Your Consideration – Fargo is Exceptional Television
Fargo is the best show on TV no one is really talking about. It’s a slow burn, admittedly, which hasn’t caught the same kind of zeitgeist fire that True Detective or House of Cards caught. But that’s probably because it’s an acquired taste – and besides, so many other TV shows have people talking, like Game of Thrones, of course.
Fargo probably has another strike against it – people don’t quite know what to make of it. They wonder, is it the movie? Is it not the movie? It is partly the movie but it departs greatly from it. Martin Freeman plays Lester, a kind of William H. Macy character who is far more diabolical. Colin Hanks is fantastic as one of the deputies, and of course, here is the one show with balls enough to cast a normal looking woman in the lead Allison Tolman as Molly. She’s kind of a Frances McDormand character but younger and more wet behind the ears. And finally, Billy Bob Thornton as the shape-shifting bad guy very nearly steals the show.
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FYC Best Supporting Actress – Drama: Melissa McBride
AMC’s The Walking Dead has largely been a non-starter in the Emmy conversation. Relegated to the well-deserved makeup and effects categories, the show is largely dismissed as “the zombie show,” evidently repelling the voting body of the Television Academy. And I’m not sure that anyone at AMC is losing sleep over that. Upwards of 18 million people tune in every week for its sometimes creative (sometimes repetitive) zombie gore.
With numbers like that, who needs Emmys?
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Penny Dreadful: Beauty and the Beast Within
In an episode destined to be equally loved and loathed, this week’s Penny Dreadful provides a compelling backstory to the show’s most mysterious character, Vanessa Ives. Narrated by Ives (Eva Green) in a letter to her missing friend Mina Harker, this chapter features none of the beautifully photographed gore we’ve come to expect. Also missing are the colorful supporting cast save Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton).
What remains is Vanessa’s descent into madness, spawned by her sexual awakening, and her curious journey back to a form of sanity. That may seem like a tall order, but writer John Logan and star Eva Green convincingly deliver in an odd yet memorable outing.
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